Verbier and Les Arcs Due to work issues, we left the organization of this trip until the very last minute. We booked the Eurotunnel the day we travelled and booked the hotels in the car on the way there. Being such a last minute thing, there was a strong temptation to just head for somewhere we know well, like Belgium or Zermatt, but in the end we managed to be slightly imaginative and at least visit two resorts neither of us had been to before (in the summer).
TVRs Friday - We drove down to Folkestone on Friday evening and got the Eurotunnel over to Calais, where we stayed overnight in the pleasant Ibis hotel next to the Citie de Europe shopping centre.Saturday - Up fairly early to start the drive to Switzerland. In the hotel’s car park were a large group of fairly old TVRs, on a road trip to somewhere or other.
TVRs Here’s some more of them. They left just before we did and made a wonderful sound together as they did so.
Switzerland Several hours later and we had completed an uneventful drive across France on their brilliant, quiet motorways, so no photos of that bit of the holiday. This is the view from the Swiss motorway service station that we stopped at for a bit of a break. Nice.
Mountains Finally, we left the Swiss motorways behind and headed into the mountains proper. In the distance, pretty much right in the middle of the photo, you can’t quite make out the town of Verbier, nestled on the mountain side.
Mountains The scenery has started to get jolly good. Judith’s little car is looking quite smart too, having whisked us across France and Switzerland at 80+mph whilst sipping diesel at the rate of a mere gallon every 47 miles.
Mountain Roads We left the valley floor and headed up the winding mountain road towards Verbier. Below we could see the towns of Chable and Montagnier. The mountains in the distance look hazy because it was scorching hot out. The car’s external temperature sensor had been showing 25-29C all day.
Cordee des Alpes We made it to our hotel, the wonderful Cordee des Alpes, early in the evening. The hotel had only opened the previous winter so this was to be its first summer season.
Suite Faced with the option of paying a huge amount of cash for a “standard” room, Judith opted to pay a moderately more huge amount of cash for a suite. For that we got a very well appointed and spacious room with two balconies and more wardrobes than I’ve ever seen in a hotel room before. This is a photo of the living room area of our suite.
Beer and Fondue Having unpacked, we went out looking for a beer and some dinner. We were surprised at how many people were out and about, until we discovered that some sort of Red Bull extreme mountain races were in the process of finishing in the centre of town.There had been three races on that day - 29km, 61km and 101km. The first competitors had left town at 5am and had been racing through the mountains in the scorching heat all day. And they all ran down the high street to the finish line. Impressive.Anyway, that was it for Saturday. Time to head back to the hotel for some well earned sleep. After dark, from our balcony we could see the head torches of the runners still finishing their races coming down the mountain.
Verbier Sunday - It turned out that our hotel had only opened for the summer season yesterday and that it was, basically, empty. There were only a couple of other people at breakfast with us.In town there were still a lot of people about as there were some more extreme races kicking off that morning.
Bisse Having procured some day passes for the cablecars, we headed off into the mountains for a walk. Having got the cablecar from Verbier (1,500m) up to Les Ruinettes (2,200m), we headed off along one of the small waterways (locally called a “bisse”) that can be found in this area.One of the benefits (or not depending on how you look at it) of walking along a bisse is that the trail is likely to be mainly pretty flat, which suited Judith very much.
Bisse View There were fabulous views looking back down the valley we’d driven up yesterday evening.
Bisse Bridges To stop the bisse from getting mixed up with the various streams running down the mountain side, these little bridges are used to keep things flowing properly.
Mont Fort The trail following the bisse went all the way to the cablecar station at La Chaux (2,260m - only 60m higher than Les Ruinettes), from where there was another cablecar up to Mont Fort, which at 3,330m is the highest view point in the area. So we went up for a look. Brilliant views, although still very hazy due to the heat. It’s amazing that all of this snow can survive this sort of exposure to the sun all summer.
Top We didn’t quite make it all the way to the very top at Mont Fort due to the path being covered in snow. Despite the warnings, a couple of fellows scrambled across the snow to climb to the top and have a look. Quite brave considering if they’d lost their footing and started sliding down the slope, there was a several hundered foot drop on either side.
Lunch After admiring the view for a while, we got the cablecar back down to La Chaux (2,260m) and then took the short, if slightly more uphill than Judith would have liked, walk to the Cabane du Mont Fort (2,457m) for a spot of lunch. You can see the Cabane in the distance in the middle of the photo.
Apres Lunch After lunch we headed out to do a bit more walking.
Cablecar As it was getting fairly late in the afternoon, Judith decided to jump on the cablecar back to town at La Chaux, whilst I decided to take walk back by a somewhat indirect route.
Cablecar You’ll have to take my word for it, but Judith is in that cablecar on her way back to town.
Verbier View I continued to follow the bisse in the opposite direction to the one we’d set out in that morning. There were some wonderful views across Verbier, although the distant mountains were still largely obscured in the haze.
Verbier View I followed the bisse all the way to Les Planards (1,990m) beford deciding it was time to head back to the hotel for some dinner. This is me approaching Verbier on the trail down from Les Planards.
Beer Time for some lovely beer and a bite to eat.Distance walked today - 9.4 miles (15.1km)Ascent - 912 feet (278m)Descent - 3,107 feet (947m)
Cablecar Monday - After yesterday’s fairly gentle warm up, today I was planning a slightly more strenuous hike from the bottom of the valley below Verbier to the top of the ridge above Verbier. So I was up early to get the cablecar down to Le Chable (821m).
Cablecar View Nice views from the cablecar. It was still quite cool too, as the sun had yet to rise enough to start shining directly into the valley. That wouldn’t last long though.
Church View And so I headed off up the side of the valley. The first few miles of the trail were through dense forest. I was expecting this bit to be fairly shady and cool, but it turned out to be stifling and very, very hot. It was a relief to break out of the trees and into the open at the the St. Christophe church (1,583m). Here’s the view from in front of the church...
Church View ...and here’s the view of the church itself.After this, the trail through the forest became bonkers steep and I had to break out my walking poles to be able to make safe and steady progress.
Chateau View West After another while I broke out of the trees again at a place called The Chateau (1,751m) for my second unimpeded view of the valley below. This is looking broadly West.
Chateau View East And this is the view looking down the valley in the other direction. Le Chable, pretty much in the middle of the photo, is where I’d set out from a couple of hours earlier.
Chateau And this is apparently all that remains of the chateau itself. Not quite what I was expecting when I first saw it on the map.
Bisse A bit further on, my ascending trail crossed the bisse we’d been following yesterday. As far as I could tell, that bit just ahead where it looks like the path just ends is where the path just ends. No idea what happens to the water as there seems to be a sheer drop of several hundred feet.
Ridge View A short while later I popped out of the forest above the tree line. I had been expecting this to be the hot and uncomfortable bit of the walk, but it turned out to be a relief to be out of the stifling trees and into the open where there was a bit of a breeze.It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the edge of the ridge was incredibly precarious. Not only was there a sheer drop of several hundred feet, but in places the edge actually overhung the drop. Plus there were big cracks in the ground a few feet from the edge. It was a great view, but I didn’t hang around for too long admiring it.From here I continued along the ridge to the cablecar station at Savoleyres (2,354m). I was going to meet Judith up here for lunch, but it turned out that everything was closed. So I got the cablecar back to town and returned to the hotel.
Thunderstorm Later in the afternoon the skies started to get very dark. Shortly afterwards the thunder and lightning started, followed by about an hour of torrential rain (as shown in the photo). After the stifling heat of the day, the storm was actually quite nice to freshen up the air.
Spa Pool We decided to wait out the storm in the hotel spa’s pool, which was particularly nice as we had it all to ourselves.Total distance walked today - 5.5 miles (8.8km)Total ascent today - 5,236 feet (1,602m)Total descent today - 364 feet (111m)
Route de la Forclaz Tuesday - It was time to leave Verbier and head over the border into France. We traveled into France from Switzerland on the Route de la Forclaz. This is the view looking toward Martigny about half way up.
View North This is the view looking North from Forclaz.
View South This is the view looking South from Forclaz.
Chamonix When we were back in France, the road passed through Chamonix, which, in total contrast to Verbier, was completely rammed.For some reason, our sat-nav had decided that the quickest way for us to get to Les Arcs from Chamonix was to drive through the Mont Blanc Tunnel into Italy and then make our way over a pass back into France again. So, being complete sheep when it comes to following sat-nav instructions, we headed for the Mont Blanc Tunnel.It costs an impressive EUR40 for a single journey through the tunnel and this is the view that you get of Chamonix from the picnic area next to the tunnel entrance.
Aiguille du Midi The entrance to the tunnel is just off the bottom of this photo. If the photo was larger and in higher resolution, you’d just be able to make out the cablecar approaching the Aiguille du Midi, which is right at the top of the peak, some 2,600m (8,500 feet) above us.
Lago Verney Anyway, we headed through the tunnel into Italy and then took the SS26 up into the pass back towards France, which a) was very scenic, and b) took absolutely ages. This photo was taken near the top of the pass. The lake in the background is Lago Verney, which is at an altitude of around 2,100m (6,900 feet). Although there was a lot of snow about, the roads were completely clear. Which isn’t entirely surprising given that it was still 27C out.There were also a fair few people out hiking, which was slightly surprising given the remoteness of the location.
Judith's Car A slghtly different angle on the previous photo. Three days in the garage at the Cordee des Alpes has kept the car looking nice and shiny.
Border A short while later we reached the French border.
Les Arcs The final part of the journey required that we descend from the pass to the bottom of the valley, then drive up the other side to Les Arcs.This photo was taken just outside La Rosiere and we could see Les Arcs in the distance on the other side of the valley. You can almost make it out right in the center of the photo. Even though Les Arcs was only about 4 miles away as the crow flies, according to the sat-nav, it was still a 29 mile drive that would take well over an hour!
Les Arcs We arrived in Les Arcs just before another torrential thunderstorm kicked off. This was the view from our balcony just after we’d checked in.
Village View Still, the rain only lasted an hour-or-so, so we waited it out in a bar, nursing 500ml of hilariously expensive Grimbergen Blonde. Once it had stopped, we ventured out for a bit of a look around. This area is probably what would be described as the “bottom” of the village.For anyone that’s not familiar with the geography of Les Arcs, it’s actually (at the time of writing) four widely separated villages: Arc 1600, Arc 1800, Arc 1950 (where we were staying) and Arc 2000. The numbers indicate each resort’s approximate altitude above sea level in meters (this is France after all). Arc 1600 and Arc 1800 are about 30-40 minutes walk apart. Then it’s another 2-3 hours of walking from Arc 1600 to Arc 1950. Arc 2000 is around 10 minutes walk from Arc 1950. There are infrequent complimentary busses between the resorts, but no direct cablecars, which makes getting around a bit of a pain.
La Rosiere From the bottom of Arc 1950 I can see La Rosiere across the valley, which is where I took my earlier photo of Les Arcs from.
Village View Another view of the Arc 1950 village. The place looks deserted because it is. There is hardly anyone around and the few people that are there are are “hiding” in their apartments, avoiding the couple of very expensive restaurants that are open despite the fact that there are few people to eat in them.Total distance walked today - 0 miles (0km) - I don’t count walking around the village looking at stuff.
Balcony View Wednesday - It’s another scorching hot, lovely day. The flowers on our balcony are bearing up well considering the heat.We go down for breakfast and aren’t surprised to see that we’re the only tourists there. There are a couple of other people having breakfast, but they’re wearing business attire, so presumably work for/in the resort in some capacity.
Arc 1950 There are no cablecars directly out of Arc 1950 (apart from the oddly named “Cabriolet”, which runs between Arc 1950 and Arc 2000, but that’s been struck by lightning and is consequently broken), so we decided to take the short walk up to Arc 2000, from where there are also no cablecars. This is a view of Arc 1950 from the trail.
Restaurant The nearest cablecar to Arc 2000 (the Varet) was closed (presumably also due to lightning issues), so we set off on the 15 minute walk to the cablecar at Arcabulle. On the way we passed this lovely looking mountain restaurant. Our hiking map, being an almost completely useless piece of junk, didn’t indicate if it had a name.
Lake Judith hopped onto the cablecar at Arcabulle, while I decided to walk up to meet her. After a short while I passed the Lac de la Vallee de l’Arc. Despite being clearly man-made, it was also apparently stocked with fish as there were a few people fishing in it.It took about an hour for me to reach the top of the Arcabulle cablecar, which is allegedly at an altitude of 2,600m (although my GPS indicated that it probably closer to 2,500m). It was a slightly more arduous walk than I was expecting due to large parts of the trail being covered by several feet of snow. Still, I met up with Judith and we decided to get the Transarc cablecar over the ridge, down to Arc 1800 on the other side of the mountain.
Arc 1800 As you can see from the photo, Arc 1800 is not at all like Arc 1950. It is comprised almost exclusively of these large tower blocks. It was also noticeable that there were a lot more people about, which meant that most of the bars and restaurants were open, which made a nice change from our more picturesque, but deserted resort.As Judith is fond of walks that end lower than they start, we decided to walk from Arc 1800 to Arc 1600. The walk itself was pleasant and easy going, but finding the start of the trail was not. Signposts for the hiking trails in this area are absolutely dismal and not at all helped by the free, stylized and generally hopeless trail map. I had bought a proper topographical map of the area, which helped a lot, but it was still a pain in the arse trying to find the start of the trail.
Arc 1600 No photos of the walk from Arc 1800 to Arc 1600 as it was pretty much all through the forest, so no views as such.At Arc 1600, Judith got on the free bus back to Arc 1950 (once we’d spent about 30 minutes looking for it), then I spent another 30 minutes looking for the start of the hiking trail back to Arc 1950, which, I kid you not, turned out to be broadly on the top of a 15 storey apartment block. Even with the assistance of the topo map (there were no signposts whatsoever that I saw), that was tricky to find.This photo is from near the start of the trail, looking across some of the chalets at the top of Arc 1600.
Cloudy By about 4pm the clouds had started to gather, which was a bit of a mixed blessing because a) it cooled things down a bit, and b) I had a fairly good idea what was coming next.I was still about a mile from Arc 1950 when the thunder and lightning started on the other side of the valley and the rain started to fall gently. Actually, the gentle rain was quite nice as it cooled things down a bit more.About 15 minutes after I got back to the resort, the heavens opened and the thunder and lightning kicked off on our side of the valley. It was a great relief not to still be out walking in that.
Arc 1950 This was the view from our balcony a couple of hours after the rain had stopped and the sun had set.Total distance walked today - 9.8 miles (15.8km)Total ascent today - 2,897 feet (883m)Total descent today - 728 feet (222m)
Aguille Rouge Thursday - Another lovely day. The Varet and Augille Rouge cablecars up to Aguille Rouge (3,226m) were working, so we decided to head up there for a look at the view. This was the view broadly looking North. Not that much to see there.
Aguille Rouge To the South-East we can see Arcs 1950 and 2000 (in the lower middle of the photo) and the lake I walked past yesterday (on the left).
Aguille Rouge This was the view of the very highest point at Aguille Rouge from the cablecar station. Because the top was covered in snow, those nets that you can see surrounding the people are supposed to stop you from sliding off to your probable death. I saw no-one slide off to their death, so presumably they work pretty well.
Half Way This was the view from the cablecar station half way up (or down) to (or from) Aguille Rouge. Again, it doesn’t seem to have a name on my hopeless map. We would have liked to walk down from here, but there was still a lot of snow around at this altitude, which would have made following the already tough to follow trails even tougher. So we just got the Varet cablecar back down to Arc 2000.
Short Loop As it was still a little early for lunch, we thought we’d try a short loop trail from and back to Arc 2000, which the map indicated should take around 50 minutes. As you can see from this photo, we hadn’t got far from Arc 2000, but we had already ascended a fairly significant amount, which Judith wasn’t enjoying very much at all.The trail continued to rise steeply for almost an hour. So much for the 50 minute loop. However, we were sufficiently far along now that it seemed pointless turning back.Having climbed steeply, the trail turned sharply to descend steeply along the line of one of the winter chairlifts. I expected us to be able to pick up the pace a bit here, but the trail was so steep and rocky that we probably didn’t manage to go much faster downhill than when we’d been walking up.
View At the bottom of the chairlift the trail turned sharply again back towards Arc 2000, onto an almost completely hidden trail. It was a good job that Judith’s eagle eyes spotted it, as I’d completely missed it, even whilst referring to the topo map. This last bit was at least (relatively) flat and the views were fabulous.At the start of this last bit of the trail was a trail marker (the first we’d seen!) saying that it was 50 minutes back to Arc 2000. So much for the 50 minute loop!
Arc 1950 After around two-and-a-half hours, we finally finished the 50 minute loop. It was a bit late for lunch at that point so we headed back to Arc 1950. Here’s a new view of Arc 1950 on the way back.
Chairlift Another view on the way back to Arc 1950.And that was us done for another day.Total distance walked today - 1.9 miles (indeed, just 1.9 miles, that’s 3.0km)Total ascent today - 650 feet (198m)Total descent today - 1,063 feet (324m)
Valley Friday - As entertaining as it was driving all the way down to Verbier in a day, we decided to give ourselves two days to drive back to Calais so that we could savour the journey a bit more and spend some time looking at things along the way.Having driven from the heady heights of Les Arcs down to Bourg-Saint-Maurice in the valley, the first thing we did was head straight up the D902 on the other side of the valley and into the pass shown in the photo. If it’s got a name, I can’t find it. It was rather picturesque though.
Camp Site The pass continued to climb into the mountains until we passed this camp site (I think it’s called Les Chapieux). That looks like a really nice place to stay if you’re traveling with a caravan, or in a camper. However, I would not relish taking either of those on the roads we drove up to get here.Brilliant view though. And on the left, just out of sight, was what looked like a gorge of some sort. If we’d had a bit more time to spare, I would very much have liked to have had a look at that. Something to save for next time.
Lac de Roselend At pretty much the highest point of the pass, just before we started our descent, was this beautiful lake. We continued on down into the next valley down a monumentally twisting road that just descended and descended and descended. Impressively, we passed many, many cyclists who were on their way up. It must have taken us half-an-hour to drive down from the top, so goodness knows how long it takes to cycle up.
Cash As we wound across the countryside, all of the towns/villages we drove through were far too tiny to have a cash machine. As we were completely out of funds, we detoured onto the motorway for a while, thinking that the motorway services were pretty much guaranteed to have one. We had to stop at three before we found one!However, it never ceased to amaze me how very pleasant (most) French service areas are. Here’s a photo of the second service area we stopped at, with its lovely pond and restaurant terrace. Why do we find this sort of thing so difficult to do over here?
Troyes We made it as far as Troyes by late afternoon and decided to stay there overnight in the funky Ibis Styles (really, look it up, “funky” is the most appropriate description for it).We didn’t get that much opportunity to look around Troyes, but it looks to be quite a pleasant medium-sized town with plenty of shops, restaurants and things to look at. It’s certainly an improvement on my initial impression of the place, when I looked out of my hotel room window after checking in to see a teenage girl cycling down the street, pulling glass bottles out of her jacket and smashing them on the road. Nice.
Cathedral of Troyes After having had a very nice pizza and rose wine for dinner, we went for a bit of a walk. This is a photo of the imaginatively named Cathedral of Troyes.In case you were wondering, I take my photos of churches at this funny angle because if you take them the normal way, you get too much sky in. That’s not necessarily an issue if there are interesting clouds, but when it’s clear it looks very, very boring.
Railings The railings outside what I think is the University.Anyway there was still a fairly long way to drive the following day, so we headed back to the hotel for a relatively early night.
Sissonne Saturday - We were headed North-East out of Troyes into the countryside, primarily to avoid having to drive through Reims, when Judith spotted the tiny town of Sissonne on the map.It wasn’t too far out of our way, so we decided to re-route and have a look.
Church This is the church in Sissonne. If it’s got a name, I can’t find what it is.
Church Another view of the church in Sissonne. There didn’t seem to be anything else to look at in Sissonne.
Cathedral After leaving Sissonne, we headed for Soissons, which was only about an hour’s drive away.This is the cathedral in Soissons. Or the Cathedrale Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais de Soissons to give it its full name. Pretty.
Cathedral Another photo of the cathedral.
Cathedral And then it was time to head for Calais and our train back to England.Overall we managed to drive 1,615 miles at an average speed of 50.8mph, returning a relatively impressive 47.8mpg (I thought, considering we spent a lot of time at 80+mph on the motorway and drove up and down a lot of mountains, which can’t be good for your fuel consumption).Driving about on the continent is such a brilliant experience compared to driving about in our own overcrowded country. I can’t wait to do it again.